China’s Pink Women-Only Parking Spots Spark a Backlash

A shopping mall in China has sparked accusations of sexism after it recently unveiled 10 parking spots designed for women only.

Painted in pink, the spots at the World Metropolis Center in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian say “Respectfully reserved for women” and are about 30 centimeters wider than other parking places.

The parking spots have outraged some Chinese Internet users, who called them sexist and disrespectful. On Twitter, one commenter wrote, “Not sure if I should laugh or cry.” On Weibo, a microblogger questioned, “Isn’t that insulting females’ driving ability?”

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A female staffer at the mall rejected such claims. “It’s not an insult to women at all,” mall manager Yang Hongjun told AFP in a report carried by the Shanghai Daily. “If their parking spaces are larger, it’s only for practical reasons. It doesn’t mean that women drive less well than men.”

Some commenters hailed the wider spots, saying women are bad drivers, while others said that women should appreciate the convenience. A Weibo commenter in Guangzhou wrote, “Lots of praise! ‘Taking good care of’ is not a synonym for ‘discrimination,’ right?”

Dalian isn’t the first city in China to dedicate parking spots to women only. At the Wonder Mall in Hebei, one of three underground parking garages was reserved for females in 2010. Spaces inside were designed to be about 80 centimeters bigger than regular parking spaces, with its walls painted with 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac so that female drivers could remember a pattern instead of a parking space number. As though that weren’t not enough, there were also dancing parking lot attendants installed to help women park their cars.

In Seoul, nearly 5,000 parking spaces near entrances of malls and other buildings were painted pink in 2009 — the logic being that women wearing high heels wouldn’t want to walk far distances to their destination.

There’s also pink-parking precedent in Germany. City regulations in Baden Wurttemberg, for example, dictate that at least 10% of parking spaces in big garages must be for women near entrances. In the city of Brandenburg, at least 30% of spaces must be for females. The regulations were put in place to help women feel safer and less prone to sexual assault, according to German officials.

If Chinese men feel left out, they could try to fight for their own parking privileges: In 2012, two men-only parking spaces were introduced in Triberg, Germany – “tricky” spaces that required difficult maneuvering. They were painted, of course, with Mars symbols.

Note: An earlier version of this report failed to note that an article cited here was authored by an AFP reporter and carried in the Shanghai Daily. It has since been clarified.

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